The research is positioned at the intersections between photography, history and the study of material objects. This volume set out to map the intellectual territory of the materiality (or ‘objectness’) of photography, to provide a theoretical framework and to consider various examples through commissioned case studies and one jointly authored by the co-editors.

The volume is cross-disciplinary, drawing from material culture studies, object narrative studies, anthropological discourse, historicity, theories of representation and the history of photography.